For all the reasons mentioned above in this thread (most importantly gtk3 support), I wanted to use and like Cinnamon, but it's been too buggy and slow on my machine. MATE on the other hand delivers the same fine experience that I had with Isadora, and so far, has been fast and stable.

So a solid +1 for MATE from me Thanks clem for providing the best 'just works' distro that I know of.

In my quick experimentation with the Live DVDs, I'm leaning toward Mate. It felt like an easier learning curve than Cinnamon, coming from the GNOME2 world. Just something simple like adding a top panel - Mate does it in a few clicks, while Cinnamon requires a restart (say what? In 2012 I have to restart a DE just to add a stinkin' panel?). I'll probably play around with both of them some more before making my final decision.

Feels like a lousy time to release an LTS, when both of these DEs are still fairly new. If only all the other major DEs weren't so much worse..

Well I've never tried Mate other than via the live CD, but I'm using Cinnamon, with Mint 13 64bit, and was very impressed at first.

But I've experienced a few issues that have left me feeling unsure about the stability of Cinnamon.

The first occured when I installed some true type fonts from my Win 7 install using Font Viewer. The fonts installed OK but I suddenly had no text anywhere, all the characters had been replaced with small white rectangles. I didn't make any changes at all to any system/application fonts, just installed the new fonts using the 'Install Font' button on the Font Viewer into the default user folder .fonts in my Home directory. Fortunately I was able to move the .fonts folder to rubbish bin and restart which returned everything to normal. I've never experienced this in any other Linux distro.Next is the disappearing panel every time I close the Software Manager. It just disappears for about 30 seconds then re-appears.After that is the Firefox problem that others have reported on the forum, ie every time I close Firefox I get the message about whether I want to save or close tabs regardless of doing everything to prevent it repeating.

These are little thing maybe but they add up to a feeling that Cinnamon is a bit too flaky to be trusted on a day to day basis. Coupled with lack of configuation options for window colours and not being able to create links in the Nautilus side pane they are pushing me to move away from Mint.

With the present version of Cinnamon , there appears to be no way to minimize a running window.If you click on the "Minimize" character on the top right edge of the window, it closes and no way to "Maximize" the window , as you used to be able to do on the "Windoiw list button" on the Panel .If you are going to make "Minimizing" obsolete , you should remove the "Minimize character from the window top edge. And then the process of multi-tasking goes the way of the Dodo Bird.

StanTheMan wrote:With the present version of Cinnamon , there appears to be no way to minimize a running window.If you click on the "Minimize" character on the top right edge of the window, it closes and no way to "Maximize" the window , as you used to be able to do on the "Windoiw list button" on the Panel .If you are going to make "Minimizing" obsolete , you should remove the "Minimize character from the window top edge. And then the process of multi-tasking goes the way of the Dodo Bird.

Thank you for your comment.I will investigate further.So far, I have installed two distros with Cinnammon.In both cases , there is a menu for setting Panel . The only widget I can find is one which is called Cinnamon window list , which does not have "maximize" and "minimize" as in the usual Gnome add widget.I have used computer often for multi-tasking , where I can have six or eight task windows running , and can go from one task task to another , for example to copy and paste selections when authoring a website or doing a large document.

Thank you for your comment.I will investigate further.So far, I have installed two distros with Cinnammon.In both cases , there is a menu for setting Panel . The only widget I can find is one which is called Cinnamon window list , which does not have "maximize" and "minimize" as in the usual Gnome add widget.I have used computer often for multi-tasking , where I can have six or eight task windows running , and can go from one task task to another , for example to copy and paste selections when authoring a website or doing a large document.

Well... that sounds really strange.This is a screenshot of a default Cinnamon desktop running three apps. As you can see, you can minimize, maximize, etc. using the window list:

Or, if you prefer, you can install the great "Coverflow Alt-Tab" extension and fast switch between application windows:

Muchas gracias , Esteban .In my Cinnammon present installation , according to the menu I should be able to double-click on a window list button in order to maximize. But here, northing happens.

The keystroke " Alt/Tab " does toggle between running windows, but I cannot select a single window out of several which may be running.

For a long time , with KDE or Gnome 2x or MATE , I could select a specific window list button in the Panel with ONE click to maximize. For example, I may have six windows running and want to do some " copy and paste" from several sources , into a new document. The single-click makes this multi-tasking very quick..

With Grub 3 it is possible to select a maximize from the desktop thumbnails, but this involves about three clicks , as againstg the single click wit the old systems.

I used to be an Ubuntu user until they came out with that Unity crap. I was using Ubuntu at work and I was using Linux Mint at home. When Gnome3 (Gnome Shell) came out I started using Fedora on one of my laptops and at first I didn't like it but then it grew on me and now I love it. So I am too struggleing to decide between MATE and Cinnamon. MATE gives me that stable and plain Gnome2 I used to love from old Ubuntu, but Cinnamon gives me a bit of Gnome Shell.

lunatico wrote:I used to be an Ubuntu user until they came out with that Unity crap. I was using Ubuntu at work and I was using Linux Mint at home. When Gnome3 (Gnome Shell) came out I started using Fedora on one of my laptops and at first I didn't like it but then it grew on me and now I love it. So I am too struggleing to decide between MATE and Cinnamon. MATE gives me that stable and plain Gnome2 I used to love from old Ubuntu, but Cinnamon gives me a bit of Gnome Shell.

I'll play a bit more with both.

Another option is to use the Cinnamon edition and install gnome shell on it (apt install gnome-shell). It's pretty easy because Cinnamon is based on gnome shell.

cwwgateway wrote:Another option is to use the Cinnamon edition and install gnome shell on it (apt install gnome-shell). It's pretty easy because Cinnamon is based on gnome shell.

Yup, I did that. But I had also already installed MATE so I ended up with a slightly messed up system with Cinnamon, MATE, gnome-shell and gnome-panel. I re-installed plain Cinnamon and I think I'm going to stick with it for a while. After all that's where the future seems to be heading.

I come from Gnome2 with Compiz and cairo-dock. I'm sad to say that MATE or Cinnamon can't satisfy me, but have great hope on XFCE edition (maybe with an added gnome-fallback session).

I experimented a lot with MATE (both LM13 and LMDE) and I don't think it's a good idea. MATE is presented as a substitute to GNOME2, but it's not true. Yes, It LOOKS like gnome2 and you feel at home, first. But it's a NEW desktop and is not (at this time) as well supported as gnome3 or xfce. Some examples: want to install ubuntuone or dropbox or cairo-dock? Well, these things are integrated with nautilus, not caja (everything had to be renamed in MATE, and it has consequences). Many things will work as gnome2, but not all. It seems easier to have a coherent nautilus file manager in xfce than in MATE. So for me, it's a deception.

Cinnamon doesn't have all these compatibility problems (true GNOME under the hood), but lacks some features (and options) right now. For example, workspace change by moving a windows (flip on move) or by mouse button2. I can live without a "cube", but the workspace flip in compiz is part of the way I work. Also, I prefer to use a dock and have a good menu in it. The Cinnamon menu is not bad (mintmenu is better and is integrated in xfce now) but is not compatible with cairo-dock. But if someone is satisfied with what Cinnamon offers right now, I think it's a safer path than MATE. Otherwise, consider xfce.